Intelligence is good for larger scale operations or territory but in a smaller scale and especially in ship vs ship combat.
I was watching a few of BjornBee’s recorded streaming sessions and I remembered that there was this thing that is bothering me for a long time now - your free fitting intel on any ship you bring.
In my humble opinion the fitting of a ship should be a surprise and not something you announce in local whenever you enter a solar system.
I am aware of the work it took to make all the ships look fancy and all and with gun-animations that give away your fit as a bonus took time and all but those gun animations do not belong on the ship you are flying and should only be visible on the gun info tab or in the dry-dock.
The “let’s see if he has autocannons or artilleries” needs to go. Before you make a first shot, nobody should know what you put on your ship or not.
If you want to see the nice animations, look at the info tap - you can make it as huge as you want - and have a looksy there.
As for the warp “gun is deploying” animation, this should be done 1 million km before you land.
But…the guns are attached to the ship. The only way to prevent this is if certain ships were able to retract their guns for this reason.
In real life, armies are constantly trying to get photos of what the enemy is carrying. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, the CIA was able to determine Cuba was receiving Russian aid because the Russian military used a specific style of shipping crate and they got arieal photos of those crates in Cuba.
To be able to use that information to your advantage you have to be very knowledgeable. That is a good thing. Lets not dumb Eve down even more because some bad pvper wants it easier.
By the way. Can I call you a Cybrex? they are a fiction character I created for a story where long after humanity discovered how to move their consciousness into machines, the AI called Cybrex led a purge of all humanity from artificial lifeforms.
These Cybrex exist to purify their mechanical race of any trace of human spirit.
It is not supposed to add something but to take away. There is way too much hand holding in EVE Online and it needs to stop.
If you want “easy”, then play minecraft or do something else.
I want to EVE Online to be cutthroat difficult again like it was when EVE was in a much better place.
That is almost important for EVE Online.
As a solo and small gang pvper you should be ashamed to you get that kind of intel flastered all over your opponent and next thing you know is some dumb-dumb asking for a speech-bubble with contains “make fly this ship with this fitting to kill this one to win”.
To me it seems you’re looking for a solution to a problem,
picking the only thing you find.
You’re not wrong, but ships are ships.
You’re barking up the wrong tree.
Hiding turrets makes no sense.
Phaserbanks? Sure!
Artillery? How?
Retracted, from inside the hull?
Besides, where would it end? Is it unreasonable to assume spies don’t share fleet fitings anyway? How would that be prevented? Is it worth the effort? Should it even be done?
I agree. In my time it was a skill to be able to guess the fitting of your opponent based on the ship.
Are you sure that your not-rant should be aimed at the ship’s outside?
This is cute. OK, let do this then. Lemme ask you a question, former csm hopeful.
Since you’re claiming that players are being hand held by this, I’m guessing you think is I something like training wheels for PvP, right? Something you can take off once you feel comfortable enough to do without?
I have been doing fine without this before it was introduced.
Think like this, you look at your opponent and you go for it, not knowing how your opponent is fit.
Turns out he has railguns fit and you need to adjust your piloting. Or in another case it turns out he was blaster fit after all and you are dead.
The un-certainty part would come to play and un-certainty is good for the game for many explosions.
It was supposed to sound not too impolite.
I didn’t say hide but maybe a generic one in place of the actual gun (as in turret or launcher).
The idea is to keep your fit to yourself until you fire the first shot - “832 - 250mm Railgun hits your ship”.
Well good for you, in the same way you can play eve by disabling the tutorial and friendly pop ups, you can also choose to take off those “training wheels” and disable the rendering of Turrets and Launchers in the game’s graphical settings.
Looks like CCP has already implemented that feature into the game and allows you to take off those training wheels at your choice.
But I’ve got another question. You say it would be good for the game but never actually back that claim up. Why would this be good for the game? Is there something inherently better in effectively making every fight a coin flip compared to what it is now? Or are you just saying things out of your rear end because you think it might hurt the feelings of some pvp players?
I’ve gotta say, it’s probably a good thing that you couldn’t run for csm with ideas like this.
Well in 99% of all cases I can tell you how a fight goes before any shot has been fired and I am guilty of not even taking fights in the first place because I know how it will go before I decide to warp head first or not.
I would take many more fights if I don’t exactly know how it will turn out. But I also know to just keep going when people behave in weird ways.
How would you see it? Would you take more fights if you don’t know what you are heading into or no?
Would you really though? Because like I said, you can already do this by turning off the Turrets and Launcher rendering in the graphical settings. Why not give that a shot for a couple of months and come back and report to us?
Nope. Why would I risk losing my pvp ship in a fight that’s effectively a coin flip?
You suggest that it should be hidden until you’re already shot, but you’re neglecting the fact that several weapon systems, like Blasters, especially, are short range that you’ll also already be in neut, scram and web range. By then it’s too late and you’ve effectively lost the fight.
This also makes it incredibly unfun to fight high alpha ships as a solo or small gang pilot. If you can’t see what weapons a ship like a Hurricane Fleet Issue flies, you might just get alpha’d instantly by a volley of Artillery guns solely because you guessed wrong that he had ACs fitted.
Until you have an idea on how to fit all ships in EVE Online, all fights will be a coin flip for you.
That entirely depends on what you are flying. It can also be exactly where you want to be at to shoot down your opponent. My Brutix for example would like this position very much.
My kiting ships not so much but you would have to catch me first and I like to be very fast if I expect to fight a blobb.
We didn’t even have that until the graphics got an update. Our ship used to fire magic things from somewhere in the middle of what is displayed as ship.
Looking at an enemy ship should give you some information about their weapon system, or in case of a T3C, their configuration.
It’s a good part of the game that relies on some experience in recognising weapon systems and configurations of ships, and it is possibly the only part of the game where the visuals actually matter. The rest of the game is playable with interfaces only.
Learning and recognising guns to get an advantage before combat starts seems a great example of good gameplay to me, gameplay that rewards knowledge about weapon systems, strengths and their weaknesses.
To be honest, this kind of intel seems much better to me than intel from 3rd party sources where you look someone’s most likely fit up from their deaths in Zkillboard.
I agree we shouldn’t be able to know everything before a fight and baiting should be possible. But I think it’s good that the game allows experienced players to have an edge in combat by recognising enemy weapons.
It was nice asking OP questions, because now his post makes sense.
He feels like PVP small/nano/solo fights can be won (if the players know how to fight) just by the way the ships are fit in the first place.
This in turn means players who don’t enjoy losing their ships will only take on fights when they have a decent amount of chance to win. Like in Pokemon, when the enemy calls in a pokemon water, you don’t keep your fire pokemon on grid. After a while you know that pikachu is a lighting mouse, so your water flying pokemon has no chance. (I don’t know if there exists such a pokemon, nor if water flying is actually weak to lightning, maybe it changed since last time I played). So what if pokemon names were hidden until the first attack ?
I think that is the main idea of OP.
So I think, I’m not sure this would change a thing. Players would use ship knowledge and ship experience instead of weapon experience to assert the fit of the target, for example don’t engage without a disengage possibility until you know how the target is fit - and then disengage if you have low chance to win. Or just disengage at once if there is a chance you can’t disengage later.
IMO the issue is that those people are just farming their kill board.
Try me. I’m -10.
I need the training and you’re not going to see how this is going to end.
Choose your difficulty level:
I’m a baby and need it easy.
Well, that ain’t gonna happen. By picking this option, you are immediately defeated.
I need some spanking, daddy!
We can fight it out in Urlen, at the gate.
It’s one of the gates with the most traffic and in a 1.0,
so I’m not having it too easy.
Please stop humiliating me D:
Hek it is, then …
Make your choice, then offer me to pick the ships/fittings of your choosing …
… aka you think of three or four ships/fittings, write them down here,
and I pick the one I want you to use.
Handicap:
No t2/trig, because that’d be unfair.
No supporting alts at all.
That seems pretty reasonable to me?
After that we can define the winning conditions and time/date.
Yah I am sorry but the whole premise of this thread is silly. More intel is always the best way to play a game. The trick is making sure that information is delivered at the right time to make sure that a game is competitive.
